Digi-Key Presents FTDI Chip with Product of the Year at BEEAs

GLASGOW, Scotland, UK - November 6, 2013

Glasgow, Scotland-based, fabless semiconductor supplier FTDI Chip has been bestowed with Electronic Product of the Year at the 2013 British Engineering Excellence Awards (BEEAs). This highly-coveted award category was sponsored by Digi-Key, with President Mark Larson presenting the prize to FTDI Chip Vice-President Graeme Cook, in recognition of the company's innovative FT800 Embedded Video Engine (EVE) device.

"Digi-Key congratulates FTDI Chip on receiving the BEEA Electronic Product of the Year award," said Mark Zack, Digi-Key's Vice-President for Global Semiconductor Products. "FTDI has been an influential supplier and partner with us for many years, and their launch of the EVE platform adds versatility and innovation to our expansive line card."

"It is a great honour to receive this award within a category with such strong competition," FTDI Chip's Graeme Cook states. "The EVE platform signifies our entry into a whole new product area and to have all our efforts acknowledged in this way is a wonderful endorsement for our team. It adds to the very encouraging response we have already witnessed from the market."

The FT800, which was released in February this year, has already had significant impact on human machine interface (HMI) construction. This highly-advanced graphics controller device integrates display, audio, and touch onto a single chip. Thanks to its novel, object-oriented approach, it is capable of simplifying the implementation of intelligent displays - allowing power budget, board space, development time, and bill of materials costs to all be markedly reduced.

About FTDI Chip

FTDI Chip develops innovative silicon and software solutions capable of enhancing the way that people interact with today's technology. Through application of its "made easy" principle, the company is able to support engineers with highly sophisticated, feature-packed, simple-to-use and robust product platforms which enable the creation of electronic designs that have higher performance, fewer peripheral components and lower power budgets, as well as utilising less board space. These products are focused on making advancements two fundamental areas; the transferring of data between electronic devices via Universal Serial Bus (USB) interconnects and Graphic User Interface (GUI) implementation. Its long-established and ever expanding USB portfolio, which comes with proven, ready-to-use, royalty-free firmware and driver support for all major operating systems, includes peripheral, host and bridge chips, as well as highly integrated system solutions with built-in microcontroller functionality. These are complemented by its graphic controllers which, which by taking a unique, more streamlined approach, allow engineers to dramatically reduce the development time and bill-of-materials costs involved in implementing next generation GUIs. They combine display, audio and touch functionality in a single compact package and are offered along with an array of development modules and software.

FTDI Chip follows a fab-less semiconductor model, partnering with the world's leading foundries. The company is headquartered in Glasgow, UK, with research and development facilities located in Glasgow, Singapore and Taipei (Taiwan), plus regional sales and technical support sites in Glasgow, Taipei, Portland (Oregon, USA) and Shanghai (China).